retrospecting BarCamp Copenhagen

On November 26th, 2008 Henriette Weber wrote:

BarCamp Copenhagen was last saturday. I have first digested everything about this Barcamp (known amongst the organizers as 8.2) today. It was a great even with a lot of surprises - variating from the really great speeches that people gave, over to the absinth tasting to the spy game, to the Ras Bolding concert.

As I have stated before on this blog - I love the un-conference format. It really makes sense to me. There's a lot of chaos and a lot of anarchy so all in all I would say that the BarCamp format is the offline event that resemples the internet the most. Which is probably why I continue to head the team of organizers.

For me it's an absolute thrill to see how much the format has grown in the danish web-underground. We even learned to play werewolf this time. BarCamp Copenhagen started out with 10 geeks sitting around a table trying to solve the problems of the world. This saturday we where 66 people coming and going throughout the day, making it a great and vibrant un-conference.

I also think the team is absolutely sublime these days supporting each others assets and faults in any way. 

Next date for BarCamp Copenhagen isn't set yet - but it will be soon, stay tuned

[barcampcopenhagen, rockbandism, un-conference] [9 comments]

why un-conferences appeals to me

On November 19th, 2008 Henriette Weber wrote:

So as you have probably had your ears full of - BarCamp Copenhagen is this saturday starting at 10:00 at KEA.

I have been madly in love with BarCamp's since the early days when the format was brand new. I started BarCamp Copenhagen back in 2006 - because I like the spontanity and the impulsiveness that a gathering of people prepared to participate come with, and the participants are really key to the focus of the barcamp.
An un-conference is - even though the structure is more like a continued discussion or a café arrangement- a lot of work, basically because BarCamp wants to be free, where you would normally pay a large ammount of money to be at a conference.
The one thing you "pay" with is: Participation. You participate by conducting a talk, a discussion, a game, or just ask a lot of questions.

The result is outstanding - everytime.

I would claim that people get more hands-on answers from an un-conference then they do at a conference. It can be quite scary to see the collective mind of the masses working it's way to all participants - but there's room for everything.

When BarCamp Copenhagen is over - the next unconference is RunRun from the 20th to the 22nd of February (yep you have to be with us for a couple of days to save the world) where we have a restriction of 30 participants =)

[runrun, barcampcopenhagen, un-conference] [3 comments]